rails/rails — pull request #9474 by HonoreDB (2013-02-27 23:30:31+00:00)
Title: More helpful error message when instantiating an abstract class

Calling a literal `ActiveRecord::Base.new` raises `NoMethodError`,
since it ends up calling `Class.abstract_class?` which does not exist.
Similarly, instantiating an actual abstract class hits the database,
when conventionally it should immediately throw `NotImplementedError`.

`ActiveRecord::Base` can't be made abstract without breaking many,
many things, so check for it separately.